Actually, we did, it’s just mostly been abandoned because “Accent marks scary,” or something. If you look in older texts, you can find words written like coördination, coöperation, etc, to distinguish between two identical short vowels, meant to be pronounced separately from the long vowel in words like soon. I want to say the New Yorker, or some similar periodical still prescribes its use in articles they publish, but that’s about it these days.
Interesting. How recently were those accents used? I haven’t really studied much English outside of modern use, but I seem to remember middle and old English having them, only for them to vanish in “modern” use.
The Wiktionary page cites Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary from 1913, so it survived at least until the early 1900s. I seem to recall coming across a similar use of diaeresis in novels from the 1800s.
Actually, we did, it’s just mostly been abandoned because “Accent marks scary,” or something. If you look in older texts, you can find words written like coördination, coöperation, etc, to distinguish between two identical short vowels, meant to be pronounced separately from the long vowel in words like soon. I want to say the New Yorker, or some similar periodical still prescribes its use in articles they publish, but that’s about it these days.
Interesting. How recently were those accents used? I haven’t really studied much English outside of modern use, but I seem to remember middle and old English having them, only for them to vanish in “modern” use.
The Wiktionary page cites Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary from 1913, so it survived at least until the early 1900s. I seem to recall coming across a similar use of diaeresis in novels from the 1800s.